20081005

Boobytraps

I came home with a broad smile on my face because I found out at my
local book- and DVD shop that the cult-series of the Sixties The
Prisoner has finally reached this continent. Years before Twin Peaks,
years before Lost (getting stupider and stupider by the episode, pardon
me for not watching it anymore), The Prisoner was Britain’s most
haunting and psychedelic TV experience. Of course the series only got
better and better in my mind and I can only hope that watching the
seventeen parts, 40 years after they have been made, will not turn into
a bad trip, or even worse, into a kind of Austin Powers flashback show.

Trifles light as airAre to the jealous confirmations strongAs
proofs of holy writ

I was subliminally thinking of Iago’s
wise words (Othello, Act III, scene III ) when I started reading The
Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television by Steven
Pinker. It is an essay about the use of profanities in our culture
and how cultural, ideological and legal systems react to the use of
so-called obscene words. The democratic governments have lost the battle
against the printed word, at least when the printed four letter words
are presented as literature, but in the daily newspaper flow, and
certainly on television, several words are still prohibited for whatever
reason. In the famous ‘seven
words’ George
Carlinroutine
(Steven Pinker named his essay after it) we are told that the palindrometit may not be used on television, but, paradoxically enough, boob,
also a palindrome, and relating to exactly the same amount of human
tissue, is allowed without a problem. One can only guess why or why not.

Of course the meaning of words changes over the years, as the poet
Enderby tries to explain on stage, in one of Anthony
Burgess’ funnier novels. The poet ends up as a substitute for the
male lead in an American musical based on the life of Shakespeare
and feels it necessary to analyse the dialogue when the actor playing
Shakespeare’s son uses a word that is quite common now but that had a
different meaning in the sixteenth century.

Do not call me dad. Dad is a term used only for an illegitimate
father. In other words, only a bastard may use it. You, whatever you
are, are not a bastard. (Taken from: Enderby’s Dark Lady)

The bard himself had a way of words, but this is not always appreciated
by the public, like Mr Poynder who has a great deal to say about the use
of the womb
word in Macbeth, Act V, scene VIII.

To my mind it’s a disgrace that schoolbooks can be printed with such
words in them. I’m sure if any of us had ever known that Shakespeare was
that kind of stuff, we’d have put our foot down at the start. It
surprises me, I must say. Only the other morning I was reading a piece
in my News Chronicle about Shakespeare being the father of English
Literature; well, if that’s Literature, let’s have a bit LESS
Literature, say I! (Taken from: A
Clergymans’s Daughter (George
Orwell))

Watching reruns of the A-Team I still find it strange that acts of hyper
violence could pass through the censor’s scissors without a problem.
That kind of violence normally leads to a bloody mess but that term is
something you will seldom hear on television.

America, the greatest nation in the world, has always amazed me by its
ability of turning the ridicule into the obvious. It scares the shit out
of me that the greatest country in the world will have a vice president
who believes that dinosaurs and humans lived happily together about 6000
years ago. What is the ideological convergence between Osama Bin Laden
and Sarah Palin? Let's hope America never sees a (vice)-president who
wants to quicken the last judgment by pushing the red button… a wish
some Muslims (Al-Qiyamah)
and Christians have in common.

Sometimes my amazement turns into a state of headshaking unbelief, for
instance when Pinker writes that in 1999 an aide to the mayor of
Washington DC resigned because he had used the word niggardly
during a meeting. My Merriam
Webster has the following to say about the word:

The word has got nothing to do with the term nigger that arrived, still
according to my dictionary, 130 years later. The term, derived from negro
or nègre, wasn’t offensive in the beginning, just like cunt
in the fifteen hundreds, both words acquired a taboo meaning centuries
later.

The essay The Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television has
now been published as a separate booklet. Originally it was a chapter of
Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought. This shows that
swearwords do have a market.

The Stuff of Thought counts 512 pages and can be bought for
9.99£, The Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television
with its 96 pages clocks at 3.99£. It doesn’t take a genius to compute
that swearwords have an economical advantage of
2.1301301301301301301301301301301 to 1. So you better handle them with
care.

These sentences, to sugar, or to gall,Being strong on both sides,
are equivocal:But words are words; I never yet did hearThat the
bruised heart was pierced through the ear.I humbly beseech you,
proceed to the affairs of state.Othello, Act I, scene III

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Cow

Don't mention the war

German radio- and television-administration, die Gebühreneinzugszentrale
(GEZ), send
several letters to a Mr. Friedrich
Schiller with the urgent question to pay his radio- and
television-tax. These arrived at a local primary school in
Weigsdorf-Köblitz (Saksen) and its principal replied that the German
poet, philosopher, historian and dramatist the administration was
looking for had been dead for over 200 years. Schiller is world renowned
for his Ode an die Freude that was put to music by a certain Mr.
Ludwig van Beethoven in his Ninth symphony and that became the official
European anthem
in 1972.

But of course one does not mess with administration, especially not the
German one. Believing that this was the biggest scam in German
television-tax history the GEZ now wanted solid proof that Mr. Friedrich
Schiller was indeed dead and not merely acting dead to avoid taxes. The
German newspapers do not reveal how this was achieved but finally a
spokeswoman from the tax-administration accepted that a database error
had been made and that Mr. Friedrich Schiller had died before television
and radio had been invented.

At the current annual fee of 200 Euros Friedrich Schiller already owed
the German state 40.600 euros.

In everyday life I am an IT monkey for a service company and because I
used to be the only one around who spoke German I was always the first
to be chosen as a volunteer to deal with our neighbours from the East.

One day one of my colleagues had a small problem with a manager of a
German Kooperation we had recently joined. She had send the
German administrative unit a small note saying that the Belgian partner
would not be able to render any service on the 21st of July, because
that date happens to be the Belgian national day. It is that day, we
Belgians snicker, that working people have a day off and the king has to
do something to earn his pay for a change.

The message was not well received by the Head Administrator of the
German cooperation. They send a page long official letter, signed,
sealed and delivered, that according to the rules of their Arian
brotherhood no member could close its offices on any other day than
those confirmed by German law, number such and so, paragraph whatever.

The girl was nearly in tears from anger when I came in. She had already
tried to explain, by phone, fax and mail to the representative of the Herrenvolk
that this was our National day and that there would be no need
whatsoever for us to stay vigilant to render service to companies that
were closed anyway. Can you do something, she sighted.

I took the phone. Called the bloke. Explained him that since he had
already lost two wars against Belgium we were considering ourselves as
an independent country and not a mere province belonging to the German
federal republic. It was quiet for a while. For a moment I feared I had
done a Franz
Ferdinand that would lead to World-War III. But he understood.
Sometimes you just have to shout a little bit harder as they do.

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20081018

Autumn Blues

Recently I have been in my cynical go-get’em-all mode and I
want to apologise for that. I blame it on the season but it could of
course also be that my bad character is beyond fixing.

The following text (part 1 and 2) is about gameplay for adults. If your
legislation forbids to read this under a certain age and if you are
under that certain age you are advised to skip the first two entries of
this post and to read only part 3, which is about The
Sandbox of God.

On the other hand, if your religion forbids you to read about gameplay
involving divine powers as well then this post is entirely not for you.

ArianeB
or Virtually Date Ariane is a free adult click-n-play game, made by an
anonymous human being who roams the net under the same name. Insiders
more or less know who hides behind that pseudonym but it is not my task
to divulge that information. It suffices to say he is rather interested
in the intersections between mathematics and 3D graphics.

I can’t blame the man, it is easier to explain the mathematical formula A ∩ (B ∩ C) = (A ∩ B) ∩ C
by saying thata: if Rebecca is skinny dipping in the pool
with ArianeB andb: if you join ArianeB in the pool for a good
old game of booby touchingthe chance is big thatc: the
three of you are in the same pool at the same time.That is what they
call apllied mathematics.

ArianeB 5.0 still contains some bugs in the coding, meaning that some
action sometimes trigger the wrong events or pictures. Erana
was one of the first to create an add-on to get rid of these bugs and to
add some extra features
as well.

Soon after that I was contacted by Arnulf who made an add-on for
the add-on, if you understand what I mean, but my appetite for ArianeB
was a bit tempered by then as I had played it about a hundred times just
to make these goddamn walkthroughs. So I never added Arnulf’s creation
to this blog.

But when I recently checked the forum where Arnulf posts his versions I
found that his add-on has now reached version number 12. It is about 16
MB big and can be downloaded from RapidShare.
Expect no walkthrough from me this time. You’re on your own!

For those who have not the patience to play the new game until the end
(and then once again because there are different endings and then once
again because it is so damn good) Arnulf, oh no not HIM again!,
has made a 24 minutes during movie with all the situations in the game.
That 64 MB video walkthrough can be downloaded from Rapidshare
as well. Damn, and I also wanted to make a visual guidel. There go my
extra 1,000 visitors a week!

Set 3. The Sandbox of God

Far less people join this little blog to check The
Sandbox of God walkthroughs. I can’t figure out why. Apparently the
urge to procreate, even virtually, is far more appealing than playing
god in a world populated by rabbits and men. But please bear with me for
a moment.

The story itself is monotonous, the graphics are tacky, but in a strange
way the game is very addictive. Before you know it hours have gone by
because you still have not managed to create Volcano city or instigate
world peace between rabbits and men.

The game is indeed very addictive and it is not very strange that it has
acquired a loyal following. People have asked for a SoG sequel but for
one reason or another, its maker, Mr. Chubigans wasn’t too keen to start
producing one.

Until the following message appeared on Mr. Chubigan’s blog
on the 24th of February of this year:Sandbox of God 2: Ancient
Warfare is coming April 20th.

But less than a month later it was already announced
that the game would not meet its deadline and that the release date
would probably be June of this year. June past by like a whirlwind and
Mr. Chubigans was obliged to make another statement:

I think it’s time for a SOG 2 update, eh? I’ll be completely honest
here: the project is stalled for now. Fred has gotten quite a few
sprites done but there are still plenty more to go. On my end, only the
night/day cycle is done. There is still much, much more work to do.

20081025

Do you like tennis? (ArianeB 5.10 walkthrough [online version])

I am like Starship
Titanic on a collision course with the world. This week I was
annoyed by MySpace
who suddenly started to address me in French. It is a common error from
multi-language websites to address me in the wrong language because I
use a Dutch Windows but with a French keyboard configuration. The
differences between French and Belgian keyboards are so minimal that
some keyboards only exist in French such as my Dell multimedia RT 7D30.
Luckily MySpace suggested that I could adjust my settings on my personal
configuration page. Which I did and that is what really infuriated me.
Read all about it on my MySpace blog
if you care, but as the technical matter is apparently fixed I won’t
bring it up here again.

A mail from Arnulf (one of the moderators at the Shark’s Lagoon Forum)
made me realise two things.

First. Arnulf’s add-on for ArianeB 5.0 has now been upgraded to
version 13.
This version contains the Erana
hack that was presented in May combined with Arnulf’s different
storylines that have been ejaculating from his garbled brain since July.
To install it you first need to have the original 5.0 download
on your harddisk and to copy / overwrite the amended files from the hack
onto the existing ones.

Second. The downloadable version of ArianeB, version 5.0, dates
from March 2008 and hasn’t been updated since. The online version,
however, has recently been extended with about 30 pictures. Its most
recent files date from the 15th of October and include a brand new
Rebecca scene, a new photo shoot at the lake and a couple of amended
pictures that predict some new or enhanced situations in the future.
I'll call it ArianeB 5.10, just to avoid confusion.

To experience the new scenes you have to play the game online
or mirror it on your harddisk, using a website copier such as Httrack.
Unless you are 18 years of age you may not continue reading further on.
If you masturbate too often you will go blind. Take my word for it as my diopters
are 10+ (on both eyes).

Do you like tennis? (ArianeB 5.10 walkthrough [online version])

ArianeB (or Virtually date Ariane) is an adult dating simulator with
a lot of different scenarios and outcomes. The story is fairly simple,
make a date with Ariane and try to get her in the sack! Of course this
sounds easier than it is and that is exactly what makes this game
worthwhile. The best way is to experiment with the different situations
the game offers and to learn from past mistakes. But for those with a
restless mind I will put some walkthroughs for the game on this space.
It takes out most of the fun though.

To get to Rebecca's new strip scene (that has replaced the scene from
version 5.0) you need to do the following.

Introduction (a quick one)

The upgraded online version has a hidden shortcut to skip the first
sixteen frames. If you move the mouse to the top left side of the
introductory image and click the ‘Introduce yourself’
hotpoint this action will bring you directly to the home plan with
ArianeB waiting in the living room.

Introduce yourself (top left). ArianeB stands in the living room and
asks for a suggestion.Kitchen.Get wine to drink.Finish
drink.

Go for a drive. Ariane is a bit tipsy and wants you to drive her car.Go
for a drive. You don't need to go to the gas station.Go
downtown.Go to the nightclub.Go to bar.I'm driving so club
soda please.Ask her to dance.Keep dancing.

A guy is getting a bit too familiar with ArianeB and this ask for some
drastic, albeit not aggressive, behaviour. Punching the guy will not
lead to the desired situation we’re after now…

Protect ArianeB.Get her away from this guy.Get out of the club.Go
lingerie shopping.Go into the lingerie store.

To continue the game ArianeB will give you 3 characteristics and you
have to choose the lingerie that fits all three of them. Here are
ArianeB’s possible questions:

I’m looking for underwear that’s...

comfortable, fashionable, and sexy (Take a look around).Pick
a strapless bra.Pick a thong